


we have grown (beyond our years)

by Chell_Sky



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-07
Updated: 2020-11-16
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:00:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25129684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chell_Sky/pseuds/Chell_Sky
Summary: Various snippets of adventures of guardians, both familiar and not.
Kudos: 7





	1. Verdant

The Vex gathered around the Black Heart, arms spread in silent supplication. The Garden grew around them and on them, marking them at its own with moss, turning their once pristine metal shells verdant with itself. 

Unknown to them, was the fact that there was someone besides the heart observing their unending prayers. A figure lay up on the cliffs above, laying on her stomach with a sniper rifle in the crook of her arm, eye resting on the scope. 

She has also been here for some time. Perhaps day. Perhaps a millennium. 

She used to murmur things to her ghost, and he would give acknowledging chirps, but that was... some time ago. Now they were quiet. The guardian's shoulder length blue hair fluttered freely on the breeze. She didn't have anything to tie them up with. I wasn't long enough to warrant it when she first entered the Garden. 

A vine snuck across her sniper, blocking half of the scope.

The guardian didn't move. She has gotten used to the vines.

The heart pulsed. The Vex worshiped. She observed. Distantly she was starting to think coming here might not have been such a great idea, but the air in the garden was sweet, and the ground was soft, and she couldn't find it in herself to care.

A vine curled around her ear and started whispering secrets.

Suddenly, the portal leading to the room opened and someone stepped out from within.

The Vex, who have not abandoned their prayers for what could've have been since the dawn of time, came to life with shuddering motions and all as one looked to the entrance.

Above them their watcher also came to life with a jolt.

"Fuck-" she murmured blinking rapidly as if waking from a nap. "'Pit, you there?" she slurred out.

"I'm here Skaia." The ghost's voice in contrast was clear as it floated up from where it was resting on the small of his guardian's back spinning his shell to cut off the few vines that dared to crawl on top of him.

"We've got a-" Skaia paused, the only word coming to her head as she moved her gun slightly to look at the person who just entered the room being: "heretic." 

_"Think you can kill a god?"_

Skaia rubbed her hear on the butt of the sniper rifle annoyed, dislodging the vine there and finished her thought: "a guest."

"Huh. Didn't think anybody would risk delving this far." Prospit commented

_"Don't think I have a choice."_

Skaia gave a hum, wiggling her gun to dislodge the vine curled around the scope.

By the time she managed that, the other guardian was already in the process of shooting her way through the horde of the Vex between her and the heart.

Skaia followed her progress through her scope, giving an appreciative 'oohs' and 'uuhs' when the hunter pulled off a particularly good shot or knife throw.

"We should help her." Prospit said.

Skaia hummed. She really didn't want to get up.

"If she needs it." She decided.

Prospit didn't argue, but he also did not try to disguise the worry flowing from him through their mental link.

Skaia have a half hearted snap of her teeth. Her ghosts was correct of course. She has underestimated the thrall of the Garden and should really be doing her best to leave ASAP, but the fact that she knew she was under a thrall didn't necessarily help. 

It didn't change how soft the ground was, how the air smelled of rain, the soothing whispers on the edge of the hearing, or the drowsiness that permeated her body. 

That was the most dangerous thing about being under a thrall of something so much more powerful than yourself. It didn't feel bad. In fact it felt amazing. And Skaia knew better than anyone, that even if she managed to get up and walk out of the Garden right now, part of her would always belong to the Garden. And that part would always yearn to come back

As she was thinking the hunter fought her way to the heart and it activated its last line of defense. Two huge Vex... fuck what they were called?

Skaia felt a flicker of annoyance as she racked her brain for the name of the Vex type that stood between the hunter and the heart. Her higher brain pounced on that annoyance doing her best to dredge it up, and fan it into an inferno. _See how this diminishes you?_ She yelled at herself. _See how less you are for it? Fight!_

"She does look like she needs help," Prospit said tensely.

Indeed the hunter bellow was was backing up frantically into cover plinking away one of the - minotaurs, that's what they were called, with her primary.

Skaia gave a snarl and jumped to her feet.

Or at least she tried to. 

Layers of vines stretched as they prevented her from moving, curled around her arms, legs, some growing from within her robes and intertwining with the others. The thrall of the Garden, materialized.

Skaia swore as Prospit started to hack away at the vines.

Beneath them, one of the minotaurs flanked the hunter and lifted its arm to smash it down upon her.

The vines around Skaia evaporated in void light, and then she was above the minotaur crossing the distance in a blink long enough to make Ikora Rey's jaw drop to the floor.

The void coalesced within her palm and she dropped it on top of the minotaur, who folded into itself and then evaporated.

Drinking in the residual light, the hunter raised her hand towards the sky and called forth a burning hand cannon.

With three shots, the other minotaur was dead as well.

For a while Skaia stood there, chest heaving from the flood of adrenaline. She went to throw a victorious grin to the hunter, but before she could both her and the hunter's attention was drawn to the heart, as it started shuddering, lighting running across its surface and grounding into the structure around it.

"It's running away!" Prospit shouted within Skaia's mind, zipping towards the heart.

Skaia's voice stuck in her throat, torn between warning her ghost away from the fleeing heart, and advising which scans he should prioritize.

It was all for naught either way, as before he could even reach the heart, a bright flash of light filled the room, and when it faded the heart was gone.

And so was the room they were in. In fact so was the entire garden.

"We're back, on Mars!" the hunter's ghost spoke, materializing next to his guardian.

Skaia heart seised in a brief moment of panic, but when she turned around she saw Prospit flying towards her, and she sighed in relief. The relief was short lived however, as she suddenly realised that she was not in the Garden anymore.

The hunter's ghost continued speaking, but Skaia couldn't hear it anymore, the sudden absence of the Gardens whispers deafening like a gunshot.

It wasn't until Prospit bumped into her temple she startled back into present, and noticed the other ghost was looking at her expectantly.

"I... what?" she asked. The very air around her felt dead. She wanted to cry.

The ghost looked at her with suspicions and then glanced over to Prospit who shifted nervously and Skaia became uncomfortably aware how the two of them looked. 

Prospit clad in his shell of Thorn fragments looked about as far away from the soft, rounded shell wearing, persona he presented to everybody except Skaia as you could possibly get, and Skaia herself was not much better. Plants growing from nooks of her armor, hair long and unkempt, probably looking at least half as unhinged as she felt. It was not a flattering picture. Worse, it was also deeply suspicious one.

For his part however, the ghost didn't bring this up and repeated himself instead: "I said, my name is Fortuna," he rolled the name on his tongue like he was trying to enjoy it. He must have got it quite recently, "And this is Dos-9." He motioned to his Guardian.

There was a beat of silence as Skaia tried to dig up her social skills from the vine-overgrown mess the Garden turned her brain into.

"My name is Prospit, and this is Skaia." Thankfully Prospit's mind was better designed than hers. And hey! With the other ghost also leading the introductions, her not saying anything might seem natural! Yay!

Fortuna for his part didn't look convinced, glancing at his Guardian who seemed to really want to ask something, but couldn't quite find the right words. Skaia for her part found that faintly curious as she had never met a hunter who cared about saying stuff with the right words before.

"Well then!" Fortuna said after another uncomfortable moment. "I think we should go. The Speaker is calling us. Thanks for the save back there!"

Skaia managed to dig up enough of her human communication protocols to offer them a thumbs up, which must have been enough for the other ghost, as he transmatted himself and his Guardian away to their ship.

Skaia groaned loudly, dropping her face into her hands and flopping down onto the ground which made her groan again. 

The ground was hard and cold, and it was almost completely silent save for the whistling of the wind. She already missed the Garden.

"I don't think we should go back to the garden." Prospit said probably picking up at least an echo of her longing.

Skaia dragged her hands across her face. She wanted to scream, and yell at her ghost, that of course they should return, they should return right now, leaving this dead deaddeaddead place behind.

But of course that was the very reason why they should stay away. "Not without a good reason." Skaia agreed grudgingly.

Beyond the pull of the Garden, the sluggishness of her brain and the faint worry about who the other Guardian will tell about this meeting, she was slightly shaken. She used to be good at resisting thralls, she had to be. She has grown complacent during her time in the Distributary, and in the following years living in a godless world, she could see it now.

Perhaps Mara was right, she thought, and then frowned, as she never remembered Mara saying anything like that.

"Idle thought: Mara Sov was right about us slash me growing complacent in the Distributary," she dictated to Prospit who gave an acknowledging chirp as he recorded it.

She didn't know how long she laid there, only started from her thoughts when Prospit transmatted her back to their ship.

The sight of familiar shelves, filled with artifacts of Light and Dark and magic completely unrelated to either, finally cleared her mind enough that she was able to think for what felt like the first time in centuries.

She sat up and shook her head, making a face as her hair rustled. She combed through it with her fingers dropping handfuls of leaves and bits of vine onto the floor making her grimace even further. She needed like, ten showers at least. Or maybe a nice cleansing depressurisation.

Standing up she motioned to Prospit who transmatted her armor away. Thankfully the undersuit was unblemished, and as Skaia combed the worst of the plant life from her hair and sat herself into the pilot seat she started to feel at least marginally human.

Rubbing the drowsiness from her eyes she keyed in the coordinates of the last city into the the autopilot. She needed to see the city again and more importantly she need to see the Traveler again. If she was going to be this influenceable by eldritch, she could at least remind herself which eldritch being her soul belonged for now.


	2. Ghosts matter

Fortuna has seen dead guardians before. His guardian did too, way too many in his opinion, but he supposed with the deeds she has done it was inevitable. When diving into the most dangerous places in the system, you are bound to find some who stumbled into these places before and didn’t make it out. But there were never so many of them. He counted at least 15, over 2 raid teams worth. With their light not even an army would be able to stop this many guardians at once. Without it however...

“These Guardians…” he breathed out, “They had no chance without their powers. That could be us.” he watched as his Guardian’s hands tightened on her gun numbly. “Guardian… Dos…”

On the sound of her name Dos stopped in the middle of a camp waiting for him to continue.

“If you die…”

The shot of fear that managed to get even through their weakened link told him that Dos already knew far too well where that sentence was going, but he plowed on regardless, “I can’t resurrect you. We need to be very careful.”

Dos nodded, and in that moment Fortuna felt incredibly pathetic. Like such an obvious advice would help her, helped the guardians currently scattered around them like broken dolls. But there was nothing else he could do for her, as he was now, his one purpose ripped away from him along with their light.

Dos was staring at on of the fallen guardians now, and he gently bumped into her head to draw her attention from it, “Let’s move on,” he urged.

Dos didn’t respond so he flew into her field of vision, blocking her view of the corpse. “Guardian I know this is…” there were no words for it so he simply moved on, “but we have to move! The Cabal are on our heels we don’t have time for…” He wasn’t even sure what she was thinking about- funeral? pyre?- one way or another there was simply no time for anything.

Dos attention was pulled behind him again, but this time instead of simply staring she frowned and brushed past him, approaching the fallen guardian. He watched her, confused, until she rolled them over and he saw what must have caught her attention.

The ghost that had been hidden beneath the guardian’s body gave a warbling cry as it pressed itself against the chest of its partner’s remains, and Fortuna found himself wedging his body between Dos’ neck and hood entirely involuntarily.

He felt her take a deep, entirely unnecessary breath, felt the sorrow crash over her mind, before she gently fished him out of his hiding spot and nudged him towards the other ghost. Unable to deny her, even if he wanted nothing less than to be separate from her in this moment, he went, bumping his shell against the other ghost in an attempt to pull its attention away from the corpse.

A scuff of a boot turned his attention back to Dos, and he flared his shell in alarm, “Ah, you won’t go far will you?”

She shook her head and shot him a forced smile, that was probably meant to be reassuring.

She walked towards the other corpses, and he turned back to trying to calm down the other ghost, listening as Dos moved the corpses around, sometimes followed by wailing of another ghost.

Eventually she returned to him, and gently pried the other ghost, who haven't even acknowledged him yet, away from what remained of their guardian. That finally seemed to startle the ghost back into the real world, as it focused it’s optics at her face, giving a confused, “...What?”

Dos didn’t answer and carried it to the edge of the camp, where the rest of the ghost were. There were about five of them, more than Fortuna expected. _Seems even without Light, guardians protect their ghosts with their life._ He thought, remembering the vice grip of Dos’ fingers on his shell aboard the Ghaul’s ship as their light was stolen from them.

They were a sorry bunch, really, only two of them even floating, about two feet off the ground, rest simply laying on the ground, only dim lights of their optics to indicate that they were not completely dead.

Dos clapped her hands together, perhaps hoping to get the ghosts’ attention, and then motioned with her hands ‘Up’ and waved towards the direction they were heading in.

“Ok, we need to move, Cabal won’t be far behind, up, up!” Fortuna slipped gratefully into translator of Dos nonverbal demands, grabbing onto the familiarity like it was a lifeline.

The other ghosts barely spared him a glance however, until, just as the silence started to stretch into unbearable, one of the floating ones piped up. “Why? What’s the point? Our guardians are dead, and without light…” it floated downwards, and it’s partner followed

“I…” Fortuna turned to Dos not sure what to say, considering that were she to die right in front of him, he’d probably do like these ghosts and simply lay down to wait for death. She didn’t say anything, but as she looked into his optic, he felt a flood of determination through their bond. ‘ _Persevere.’_ It seemed to whisper, and he spun his shell around, gave his guardian nod and turned back to the other ghosts.

“Your guardians gave their lives to protect you,” he began, “They knew what awaited them, and still they did it without hesitation. Are you really going to spit on their sacrifice like that?”

None of the ghosts moved, but all their optics were now trailed on him.

“The Traveler gave you life, and each and every one of you is a piece of him that, once destroyed, is never coming back! We cannot simply let you die here like that.” Harsh practicality of the situation being that there were a lot more light touched corpses out there than there were ghosts. Between the guardian and their ghosts, only one of them was even somewhat replaceable, and it wasn’t the machine made by a god’s dying breath.

“Your light may be gone, but we will get it back! And then we’re gonna need you. And bottom line is: we can’t simply let you be some Cabal’s bragging rights. So get up!”

It almost looked like his words have gotten through, but as one second flowed into the next, and it became obvious none of them was going to move first, the whole pile seemed to wither even further somehow.

Fortuna felt defeat settle over his shell like a cloud of darkness and he looked towards his guardian, only to find her pouring some supplies out of a sack. She finished shaking the sack out and swept her eyes over the pile of ghosts, and then, with another wave of determination, she came over to it with the sack in hand, and then… she started shoving the ghosts inside.

“Hey, what the hell are you doing?!” one of the ghosts, who’s indignation over Dos’ action seemed to overpower it’s desolation, flew into Dos’ face, narrowing its optics at her.

Dos narrowed her own optics right back, pointed at the road up the mountain, and then stabbing her finger at the sack. The message was clear.

“You either float with us or you’re coming in the sack.” Fortuna translated, not quite able to erase the slightly hysterical gleefulness from his voice.

The other ghost looked at him in disbelief, but as Dos loaded the rest of the ghost into the sack, the fight leached out of it and it lowered herself into the pile.

Dos knotted the sack up, threw it over her shoulder none too gently, and with a last steadying breath she resumed her trek.

*

Using a bag full of ghosts to smack a cabal war-beast across its snout was probably the most undignified thing to happen to the said ghosts in a long while. Then again, they all were suffering many indigities lately. From tattered cloaks, to scratched shells a lot of things fell by the wayside in the name of pure survival.

“I WILL STAB YOUR EYES OUT!” the sack rattled but Dos was too busy frantically stabbing a beast in the eye to pay it any attention. The beast finally went limp, but two others were bearing at Dos from the side. In desperation, she threw the sack full force at the closest one just as it lunged, drawing her gun in one smooth move and emptying half a clip into the other beast’s head and then swinging it around just as the first beast recovered from a face-full of ghost sack and finishing it off. The cabal accompanying the beast opened fire and she slid behind a rock for cover. Fortuna transmated another full magazine into her hand and she slid it in, before jumping over the rock and exploding the cabal’s head in the same motion.

In a poignant world, silence would descend to contrast the frantic moments just before.

This was not a poignant world.

“You. Absolute. Animal!” the screaming ghost untangled itself from the sack, shell bristled in fury, “Did you just use us as an improvised club?!”

“You might have noticed that we were trying not to get our face chewed off at the moment.” Fortuna bit back as Dos walked over and started gathering spilled ghosts back into the sack, “Also if you have enough energy to yell at us, guess that means you have enough energy to fly, right?”

That brought the ghost up short for a moment, shell drooping before it rallied again and looked straight at him “Anything is better than that sack… I’ll follow.”

“Good.” Fortuna said as Dos walked back to them, sack over her shoulder again. Another ghost was floating after her.

“Oh you’re gonna be flying too?” Fortuna asked it.

It nodded, “My Guardian… she’d want me to continue.”

“Oh… well… good! My guardian was getting tired of carrying all of you anyway.” Fortuna said. The flash of amusement from Dos and a way other ghost’s shell twitched in a snort made him glow with pride.

They continued on, deeper into the mountains.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Skipping straight to D2 because I did not play D1 so I don't have much material to work from there. Might come back to that time eventualy, but for now enjoy the first piece I ever wrote for this fic. Skaia didn't even exists when I first wrote this that's how old it it :D


	3. New light

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Realized my next snipped is from after Forsaken, so I decided to finish writing something I've been sitting on since the beginning but never bothered to flesh out so we don't have 2 huge time skips back to back.

There was one barn on the farm that managed to avoid being swarmed by Guardians. In fact they avoided it like the plague. To a casual observer it may not be immediately obvious why. The barn was quite dilapidated, but no more than some others and there were quite a lot of engineers working on various ship inside it daily, seemingly unconcerned with whatever kept the Guardians away.

But slightly more thorough observation would reveal that even the human crew gave a wide berth to one of the corners with various stacked boxes. Approaching these boxes and peering behind them would reveal a pile of small pointy robots resting in a pile, eerily quiet and still.

They were not dead Suraya knew. Some Guardians, or rarely, scouts, brought dead and dying Ghosts to the Farm before, and those were always given quiet small funerals, away from civilian eyes.

No, these Ghosts were simply those that gave up. Death of their Guardians seemed to have broken them, and apparently Guardians found that much more disconcerning that dead Ghost shells.

Suraya was not currently thinking about dead Ghost corner, however. Instead she was furiously checking her mental list of things she wanted to take with her to the City.

"I still cant believe I'm doing this," she told Luis, stuffing things into her pack. "I spend my whole life trying to avoid the city, and now I'm not only going to live there, but right in the tower? Or... wherever the Guardians are going to be based now." She frowned, "They can't go back to the tower right Luis? Last time I saw it the place was blow to hell and back, and that was just from a distance."

She shook her head, "Still... just imagine it... ME! In the city! Must have caught some crazy from all these Guardians running around to accept that offer."

She finally managed to buckle up her pack and turned back to Lois, "What do you think pal?"

Louis however was not paying attention to her at all, instead looking out to the side.

Suraya followed her gaze to find a figure crossing the Farm heading to one one of the barns. Guardian by the looks of things, Suraya never knew of anybody else who would unironically wear robes into battle.

Normally the sight of a Guardian around the Farm would not be in any way unusual, but right now pretty much all Guardians were off in the city celebrating its reclamation, so Suraya found herself curious about what the lone warlock was doing here.

She narrowed her eyes as the warlock disappeared into the interior of a barn. "That's the barn with all the Ghosts isn't it?"

Lous didn't answer.

"Maybe they plan to move them? They probably have better places to keep a bunch of depressed Ghosts other than a random crate in an corner of an old barn." Suraya wondered.

The warlock came out of the barn and they were indeed holding a crate in their arms, but then, instead of heading towards the landing zone for jumpships they turned and headed into the woods surrounding the farm.

Suraya frowned and glanced towards Louis. "You think we should follow them?"

Louis spread his wings and glided in the direction of the Guardian.

Suraya briefly considred jumping over the railing and then realized that she was indeed spending way too much time around Guardians and ran down the steps, like a person who only has one set of knees, thank you very much, instead.

The Guardian wasn't moving hurriedly, but then again for Guardians 'not hurried' still meant a relatively fast jog, and they had a lead on Suraya, so she was forced to hurry even more, meaning that by the time the Guardian finally stopped in a clearing about ten minutes later Suraya was starting to breathe heavily.

The Guardian dumped the Ghosts out of the crate onto the ground and she- going by the voice- was in a process of yelling at them, loudly enough that Suraya didn't even need to step out of the fores canopy to listen in on what she was saying.

"-honoring your Guardian by laying here wallowing in self pity? Give me a break!"

"And what would you have us do?" One of the Ghosts roze from the pile and got into the Guardian's face.

"I would suggest getting off your asses and finding someone to continue your Guardian's legacy." The Guardian retorted

"There is noone else, stupid! A Ghosts get one person who's right for them!"

"Oh please," the Guardian scoffed. "you really think that? I don't know who the fuck told you that. I know for a fact it was not the Traveler, because it’s just blatantly untrue."

"You're lying." growled the Ghost.

"She's not," retorted the Guardian's own Ghost, "I, personally know ghosts who are on their second Guardians.

"No..." the first Ghost backed away and shock itself in denial

"I know it hurts." Guardian's Ghost continued, voice more gentle now, "But we aren't here just for our Guardians. We are here for humanity as a whole. And you are not helping anyone by sitting in a pile in some dusty old barn."

A second Ghost rose from the pile this one's voice more feminine, "And what are we going to do if they die too?"

"Same thing you're going right now I suspect," Guarian's Ghost retorted dryly. "But if it helps, statistically speaking you are very unlikely to outlive your Guardian a second time."

The second Ghost hovers in place for a second before giving a humorless chuckle, "Isn't it kinda sad that it does help?"

With those words she turned around and flew off.

Like her departure was some invisible command the rest of the Ghosts in the pile also started to lift into the air and wordlessly flying off in different directions.

The first Ghost who spoke stayed and glared at the Guardian and her Ghost, "I don’t want a guardian."

"Then don't get one." the Guardian's Ghost somehow managed to translate shrug by using its floating shell pieces, "I't not like there aren’t plenty of of those things that you can do to help."

"The Speaker used o say that," the Ghost said in a small voice.

The Guardian lowered her head and her Ghost drooped in the air

"I'm sorry," he said.

The Ghost gave both of them a long look before it turned around sharply and flew off after the rest of its brethren.

There was a moment of silence, the Guardian and her Ghost watching the Ghosts fly off and Suraya considering whether she should turn back and pretended she was never witness to this moment that now felt strangely... sacred almost, before the Guardian turned her head towards her and called out: "You can come out now."

Realizing that the jig was up Suraya stepped out of the cover of the trees and faced the Guardian. She was an Awoken, something Suraya didn't notice before as the moonlight leeched color from everything, but which was unmistakable now that she could see Guardian's glowing yellow eyes which didn’t quite meet hers. Her Ghost hovered at her side in what Suraya came to think off as the default shaped shell with image of a snake painted across it.

"Ah!" the Guardian exclaimed as she stepped out the trees fully, "if it isn’t Suraya Hawthorne!"

"That's me," Suraya confirmed, "have we met?"

The Guardian grinned "Kidna. You gave me half a second of consideration to trow a bunch of bounties at me before turning back to yelling at a bunch of people through comms."

"Ah." Surya winced, "Sorry?"

"No offence was taken I assure you." The Guardian answered, the glow of her eyes changing to thin crescents moons as she smiled. "There was no reason for me to demand more of your attention at that moment. Nevertheless now that we have met in a less time sensitive circumstance allow me to introduce ourselves." She placed her hand on her chest, "Skaia," and then gave a flourishing wave towards her Ghost, "Prospit."

"Pleasure," Surya responded, and then fell into an awkward silence, not sure how to continue the conversation.

The Guardian gave a slow blink, still not meeting Suraya's eyes and turned away to watch the quickly fading lights of the Ghosts disappearing into the night.

Suaya feeling much more comfortable, now that it became clear the Guardian wasn't going to insist of having polite conversation came to stand next to her and also tilted her head up to watch the Ghosts, and eventually as they disappeared, simply watching the stars.

"Do you think they're gonna do it?" she asked eventually.

"Hm?" Skaia made an inquisitive sound.

"The Ghosts." Suraya clarified, "Do you think they are going to go and find another Guardian, just like that?"

"Unless they die." Skaia shrugged. “They don’t really have a choice otherwise do they?”

“What do you mean?” Suraya turned to Skaia startled.

Skaia smiled sadly towards the sky. “The Traveler created them for a purpose. They cannot deny that purpose. Merely... delay it.”

“And you?” Suraya asked.

Skaia tilted her head to the side and looked in Suraya’s direction from the corner of her eye. “Me?”

“Guardians.” Suraya clarified. “Aren't you also created to defend humanity?”

“Ah,” Skaia said understanding and then she chuckled. “I’m afraid that is something of a misconception. Guardians make their own fate.”

Her face darkened. “For better or worse.”

Suraya raised her eyebrows "You wanna elaborate on that?" she prompted.

"Nah." Skaia shrugged and her eyes crinkled with smile again. "Maybe you should've asked me before we reclaimed the city and you were still something of an unofficial commanding officer."

Suraya found herself bristling at Skaia's tone, "Oh is that so?! So what you got your city back so you don't need me anymore?" she spat.

Skaia drew back at her outburst and lifted her hands in a placating gesture.

"No! I-” She paused for a brief moment, and then she continued in much more polite tone of voice than before.

“It seems that I have phrased my thoughts incorrectly. I apologise if I had caused any offence. I merely assumed that you would be glad to see the last of us along with the weight of humanity's survival on your shoulders and would get back to... whatever it is you were doing before the War."

Suraya took a deep breath to try to calm down. "Well as a matter of fact I'm actually moving to the City. I'm going to be working with the Vanguard."

"Oh!" Skaia exclaimed. "Well then it seems that I entirely misjudged the situation in its entirety, let me offer my deepest apologies." She pressed her hand to her chest and bowed her head slightly.

Suraya crossed her arms "It's fine." Skaia's tone was rubbing her the wrong way, but if she was going to try to be more diplomatic to Guardians she supposed that she better start now.

"May I ask what you will be working on with the Vanguard then?" Skaia queried after a brief awkward silence.

Surya shrugged, doing her best to keep the conversation going, "Currently we're thinking clans."

"Oh neat." Skaia said, and then apparently not knowing what else to add she turned her face up to the sky once again.

"Yeah." Surya agreed and they lapsed into awkward silence.

Eventually though Suraya’s curiosity got the better of her. "So what did you mean then, back there? About Guardians making their own fate for better of _worse_?"

"I mean, pretty much what I said." Skaia shrugged, "Our free will gave you Guardians and the Last city, but they also gave you Warlords. Up to you if you think its worth it."

Suraya glanced at Skaia. "You know they never told us much about the Warlord back at school.”

Skaia hummed thoughtfully.

"Probably didn't help that I never paid much attention in the classes." Suraya smiled wryly.

Skaia barked out a laugh, "Yeah I've heard schools can be pretty boring,"

"You got no idea. You're so lucky that you never had to go to one."

"Sounds like it.” Skaia grinned.

They trailed off into silence again but this one much more amicable that the ones previously.

"So..." Suraya said eventually, "Warlords?"

Skaia rolled her eyes, “You’re persistent did anybody ever tell you that?”

“Some people.” Suraya smirked.

Skaia gave a deadpan ‘ha’ and then she sighed, all traces of humor gone from her face. "I suppose you should probably hear it if you're going to be working with us."

She ran a hand down her face and suddenly, despite looking younger than Suraya she suddenly seemed ancient, like the weight of the centuries was pressing down on her shoulders and Surya found herself wondering just how old Skaia truly was.

"There isn’t all that much to tell really. Before the Guardians, before the Last city, there were Risen, and there were scattered pockets of survivors of the Collapse desperately trying to stay alive."

"Having an immortal warrior of the light on your side drastically improved your chances of survival. But it was easy to start thinking of that warrior as something... more than human. And when people around you treat you as a god...”

Skaia gave a heavy sigh and closed her eyes, sorrowful expression on her face. “It is far too easy to start thinking of yourself as one. Especially if you don’t have any memory of your previous life. Mix all of those facts together and what you end up with: Warlords."

"Warlords..." Suraya echoed.

It wasn't the first time she heard that word, but every time before it was always some vague historical fact that nobody was hurrying to explain in any detail. It was just one of the many big words that got thrown around in their history class right there along with "the Golden age" and "The Collapse". But the way Skaia spoke the word... Suraya could almost feel the weight of it, in the slump of Skaia's shoulders, in her face void of expression in a way that suggested the feelings inside were too vast to be encompassed by her face. In that moment, Suraya was sure, despite not knowing anything about Skaia, that she was there during the Warlords days.

Skaia nodded, "Not all of them were complete monsters of course. Some of them did manage to escape the delusions of godhood, and merely served as the protectors of their people But fact of the matter is, those kinds of Warlords don’t really make for good stories, unless your name is Lord Shaxx.

Suraya almost asked if Skaia also used to be a Warlord like that, but tin the last moment she pulled herself back and settled on: "They didn't teach us much about warlords back in school."

"They wouldn't." Skaia shrugged, "The City leadership has vested interest in keeping peace between civilians and Guardians, and that's already difficult enough without having everybody be aware of how awful we can be if given the right circumstances.”

Suraya raised her eyebrows. "You'd think it would be pretty easy to sell people on having an army of immortal Guardians defending the city, instead of them having to do it themselves."

Skaia chuckled, "Well you'd really think so, but that barring a few exceptions most of us tend to rub mortals the wrong way.” She flashed a quick grin in Suraya's direction. "Let's just say most most Guardians find it hard to relate to mortals and vice versa."

Suraya rubbed her chin thoughtfully, "I never noticed that with Guardians I was in charge of."

Skaia’s grin dropped off her face and she gave a sharp ‘tch’ turning her face away from Suraya, "Well it's good to know that horrific collective trauma makes us more palatable to you people." she spat biterly, first real emotion that wasn't low grade amusement coloring her voice.

Now it was Surya 's turn to raise her hands into the air placatingly, "Hey, I'm sorry I didn't mean it that way, I just-"

"I know." Skaia interrupted.

Suraya dropped her hands thinking back on all her interaction with depowered Guardians, "I'm sorry." she offered

Shakaia shrugged her shoulders sharply. "Apology accepted."

Suraya found herself defensive in the face of Skaia’s dismissal, “It’s not like you were the only ones who suffered! Other people from the city have lost a lot too, homes, loved ones-"

“How about we don’t go into suffering olympics?” Skaia snapped, "Yeah war is awful for everyone involved, color me shocked, but at least you guys didn't have _part of your soul ripped out_."

"I... I never thought about hit that way." Suraya admitted. She never really thought of Guardians in the same context as trauma. Maybe a part of her that was still that little girl listening with wide eyes to stories about Guardians single handedly saving entire villages from Fallen raiding parties, and it didn't occur to think of them as people with same vulnerabilities as civilians, even when they got depowered.

Sakai snorted humorlessly.

"How was it?" Surya asked, and them moment the words were out of her mouth she bit down on her tongue, realising how fucking awful that question was.

Skaia seemed to share that opinion because she snapped her head around and asked: "Really? Fucking really?"

"Skaia," admonished her ghosts and Suraya jumped a bit. She had completely forgotten the Ghost was there.

Skaia threw him an annoyed look, but she did stop glaring at Suraya, (well more like glaring at an empty space above Surya's shoulder but she got the message.)

"I shouldn't have asked that," Suraya backtracked, "I'm sorry."

"Probably not," Skaia agreed, "But then again...” She sighed and turned away from Suraya. “You're too curious for your own good. I can respect that. I mean hell-" she chuckled humorlessly, "I'm a warlock. Being too curious for my own good is kinda my job description."

She shared a long look with her Ghost, and some sort of unheard conversation passed between them, making Suraya feel like even more of an intruder than when she watched them wake the Guardianless Ghosts from their depression.

Skaia broke eye contact with her Ghost first turning her face to the sky again. Her Ghost floated closer to her and pressed himself against her neck.

Suraya did her best not to fidget, as the silence stretched out for almost a full minute, before Skaia finally spoke.

"The worst part was that it wasn't complete you know? Well no, obviously the worst part was the fact that I was suddenly mortal again, and didn't even have my light to defend myself against all the threats that seemed so inconsequential before, and suddenly could very easily be the last of me."

Skaia looked down on the ground and clenched her fists, "But somehow the fact that I still didn't tire, still healed so much faster than morals... it made if feel like mockery. Like!" she threw her hands in the air, "If you're gonna take our light away at least let us feel normal for once in our lives! But no. We were still freaks. Except now we didn't even get immortality and cool powers out of the deal. Just..." she trailed off and ran a hand down her face suddenly seeming very tired.

She traded another look with her Ghost. “Well-” She clapped her hands together and suddenly the easygoing tone from the beginning of the conversation was back. “It was _lovely_ meeting you Hawthorne but I’m afraid I must be off!” She grinned mischievously. “The laws of physics won’t break themselves!”

And with that and a last lazy salute she disappeared into the trees leaving Suraya blinking after her in bewilderment.

“Well,” she turned to where Louis was blinking down at her perched on a tree, “I suppose that’s one way to end a conversation.”

She looked in the direction Skaia disappeared in before shaking her head with a chuckle and motioning for Louis to take into the air. “Come on girl, let’s head home.”


	4. Chapter 4

“You know what’s more pathetic than a cult of personality?” Skaia asked kicking a pebble down a sand dune irritably.

Prospit sighed, "No, but I'm sure you'll tell me."

"A cult of personality whose personality doesn't even want it. Like say what you want, at least the cult that formed around, I don't know, for example the Speaker was, if not encouraged then at least tolerated by its focus."

"You sure got the 'don't speak ill of the dead' thing down pat." Prospit commented dryly.

Skaia rolled her eyes. "That's more of an ethics thing not a moral thing, therefore unnecessary between the two of us. But anyway!"

She jumped up onto a stone obelisk and looked around before floating down and continuing her meandering circuit of Mercury patrol zone. "As I was saying: At least the likes of Speaker, Hideo, and Lakshmi encourage their followers. The people who follow Osiris? They chase the guy down across the Solar system, and then whey they find him, he tells them: 'go back to the City for fucks sake.'"

"I seriously doubt he swears at them."

"Twenty glimmer he swore at them at least once."

"One: that's a sucker's bet, second: we share glimmer account."

"Either way!" Skaia waved the tangent aside, "He tells them to go back to the city and what do they do? Do they listen to the guy they worship, common sense, and literally 90% of human population and go back to the one place in the entire Solar system where their chances of survival are higher than Kinderguardian in Trials? No!" Skaia snapped her pulse rifle up and and fired off a burst into a Cabal legionary's head.

"They decide to camp on out here, in the most Vex infested _planet_ of the system and then _we_ have to go around cleaning their porch of Vex and these fucking guys." She fired off another two bursts both striking their targets and then threw a grenade at a colossus while pulling out her shotgun before deciding, fuck it, and just trowing nova bomb at the guy.

If you couldn't go with overkill on patrols when could you?

"Man you'd think the Red Legion would be able to read the writing on the wall," she complained dusting off her hands. " I mean its been how long since Ghaul got his ass kicked?”

"Like two months," Prospit deadpanned.

"Yeah! You'd think they be working on you know, 'tactically retreating' not bleeding their reserves dry on a piece of rock with nothing on it, but some Vex and a group of crazy cultists with no strategic value," Skaia said. “Didn’t they see how the traveler evaporated Ghaul?”

“The loss of one commander will hardly make the whole Red Legion turn tail and run.” Skaia could feel Prospit’s eye-roll. “I’m sure there are dozens of commanders vying for the position Ghaul left behind. Which you would know if you knew anything at all about Cabal,” he said peevishly.

“Listen-” Skaia threw her arms to the sides lobbing a grenade into a Vex goblin cresting a sand dune in front of her in the same motion, “I am an expert on lore of literally every other race in this system, I can afford to have one race I just don’t give a shit about. And that race-”

She froze in her tracks as more Vex followed the one disintegrated by her grenade. And then more Vex followed _those_. “...are Cabal. Shit!”

The Vex opened fire as Skaia threw herself behind cover.

Minute later she was standing over the corpse of a Hydra that was accompanying the Vex squadron that foolishly decided to pick a fight with her.

“What the fuck?” she asked to no-one in particular, “Why the fuck are there suddenly so many Vex here?”

“Good question,” Prospit said materializing next to his Guardian and floating down to run scanner beam over the Vex remains.

Skaia panned sights of her rifle over the horizons, watchful of any further threats. No more enemies showed up and eventually Prospit finished his investigations.

“Nothing weird about these Vex in particular, but I queried Ghostnet in the meantime and there definitely seems to be an upward trend in Vex activity in the area.

Skaia frowned. “Why haven’t we heard about this?”

“It wasn’t pronounced enough to make it into official record,” Prospit explained, looking around and flitting over to flat stone nearby. "But patrol of this size definitely is." He aimed a laser at the stone and carved a sigil into it. "Give me a boost will you?"

Skaia sighed and walked over to him. She pulled out a knife from her boot and extended her hand towards Prospit, letting him dematerialize her glove, before slashing her palm open and slapping her hand down onto the sigil.

The sigil absorbed the blood like a sponge and a wisps of energy rose up from it curling around Prospit who relaxed his shell letting his core absorb them before releasing a pulse of Light.

The pulse faded out and Prospit hung in the air processing the information he was receiving before perking up.

"I have some weird energy signature to the north. Let's go," he said sweeping more lasers over the sigil quickly making it unrecognizable as anything else as random damage to the stone before materializing back into his Guardian's armor.

Skaia frowned. "Weird how?"

"Vex teleportation signature, but mixed with Light, of all things."

Skaia grimaced. "Please don't tell me Vex are gonna get into ‘trying to use the Light’ business as well."

"Well we'll just have to go over there and see, won't we?" Prospit said placing a marker on Skaia's HUD.

Skaia sighed and hopped onto her sparrow.

The marker brought them near one of the gateways into the Infinite forest, Skaia glancing suspiciously at the shifting patterns of the triangular entry portal before focusing once more on her Ghost.

"Yeah there's definitely something here." Prospit said materializing once again and flying forward, Skaia following, scanning for any threats around.

None materialized, and she put her gun down and came closer to see what her Ghost pulled out of ever-shifting sands of mercury. 

"A dead Ghost?"

"Not dead." Prospit corrected depositing the Ghost into Skaia's hands and sweeping his scanner beam over its shell. "Although heavily damaged. By Vex rifles no less. It's the source of the weird readings, but- hmmm." He frowned down onto the Ghost. "This light signature seems familiar... Sagira?!"

Skaia blinked down at the ghost for a couple seconds before the name clicked within her mind, and then her eyebrows shot up to her hair line. "You mean _Osiris's_ Sagira? No way!"

"Yes way. What is she doing here?"

"And where is Osiris?" Skaia looked around, half to reaffirm that there were no threats sneaking up on them and half to scan the scenery around for any traces of the legendary Warlock. 

Neither enemies nor Osiris materialized and she frowned down onto the Ghost in her arms. "Do you... do you think he's dead?" she asked Prospit.

Prospit spun his shell around nervously. "I don't... you'd think the death of someone like Osiris would be pretty noticeable you y’know? Like 'fight with his final opponent shaking the skies and the earth' type of deal."

"Yeah but..." Skaia bit her lip. "Plenty of legendary guardians died unremarkably... Saint 14 for example."

"He might still be alive." Prospit said half jokingly.

Skaia gave a half-hearted laugh but her attention was still focused on the still body of Ghost in her hands. "Without a Ghost all it takes is one misstep," she murmured.

"Yeah but why would they split in the first place?" Prospit ran another scan over Sagira as if enough scans might yield the secrets of the situation to him.

Skaia gazed at Sagira for another moment before shaking her head and extending her arms for Prospit to engram her. "Whatever the reason it cannot spell anything good for us. We need to tell Ikora."

* * *

"Skaia," Ikora greeted warmly as she approached her. "What news do you bring?"

"Bad ones I'm afraid," Skaia answered and motioned for Prospit who materialized Sagira on a stack of Ikora's books.

"This is... Sagira?" Ikora's eyes widened slightly as she took in the motionless Ghost.

"Yes." Prospit confirmed. "She's not dead yet, but she's heavily damaged to the point where it might not matter much. We have found her on Mercury along with significantly higher Vex activity in the area."

"Hm." Ikora tapped her fingers on the table as she thought," This is troubling..." she looked back towards Skaia, "Thank you for bringing this to my attention Guardian. You may go now, I will address this situation."

Skaia crossed her arms cocking her head to the side. "You mean you'll get Dos involved.”

Ikora raised an eyebrow at Skaia’s proclamation "And what brings you to that conclusion?"

Skaia shrugged. "Its not a big leap to make. Something that can separate Osiris of all people from his Ghost could very well end up being an extinction level threat, and in the past couple years there is only one Guardian you send to deal with that type of thing."

Ikora inclined her head in acknowledgment smiling slightly. "Any particular reason you would bring this up?" she asked.

Skaia exchanged a look with her Ghost who nodded determinedly before she faced Ikora once more. "You don't need to concern Dos with this. I can investigate further myself."

Ikora frowned slightly. "Are you certain?"

"Hey, I'll have you know I'm a certified bad-ass too!" Skaia exclaimed in mock outrage before she turned to look out towards the city, expression turning serious again.

"I think it would be best if we gave her some time. The Red War..." she looked up at where the half shattered Traveler hung in the sky. "It took a lot out of all us, but her especially. We should give her a break as much as we can. Well," she gave a wry smile, "as much of a break as you _can_ give to a workaholic like Dos."

"Perhaps you're right..." Ikora turned and ran her finger across Sagira's shell thoughtfully before nodding, "Very well. But Skaia-" she gave Skaia an intense look which would probably be more effective if Skaia would meet her eyes. "I expect you to call for help if this matter proves beyond your capabilities."

Skaia bristled wondering if it was worth pointing out that Ikora would never tell such thing to Dos, but in the end dismissed the impulse.

"I have not gotten this far by being foolish," she said instead letting her annoyance color her tone.

Ikora gave an acknowledging nod, accepting the implicit rebuke.

"As Osiris is exiled technically it is forbidden for him to receive assistance from the City." she explained switching to a business-like tone. "However we cannot let a possible threat of this scale uninvestigated."

"So we're keeping this on the down low I gotcha." Skaia leaned against Ikora's table smirking. "You'd think that with recent happenings the Consensus would start to rethink their decision to exile our brightest from the City."

Ikora gave Skaia a warning look. "There are a lot of changes happening in the Consensus currently, but things like these take time, and the decision to exile Osiris was not made lightly."

"Doesn't mean it was correct," Skaia muttered under her breath, but waved the tangent aside before Ikora could respond. "Either way, keeping this on the down low, got it. Any leads you might have?"

Ikora shook her head. "I have not been in contact with Osiris since his exile. But there are those that were."

Skaia grimaced, "The Followers."

Ikora nodded, "For all their fanaticism they are our best lead to know what Osiris has been doing lately, and that might provide a clue to the nature of the threat we are facing.”

Skaia gave a heavy sigh and headed into the hangar, Prospit snatching up Sagira’s body and following behind.

* * *

Going back to Mercury after they just left was kinda annoying, but nowhere near half as annoying as dealing with Vance of all people.

"Why did it have to be Vance?" Skaia whined as their ship lifted off surface of Mercury for the second time that day.

"Well at least he have us an idea where to go next," Prospit told her. "And if the Followers truly did figure out a way to repair damaged Ghosts that could be a game-changer."

“Would also make it _really_ shitty that they wouldn't share that knowledge before." Skaia growled clenching her hand into a fist.

"It's possible whatever they have only works on Sagira," Prospit said. "That's the trouble with us Ghosts, you know. We may all look the same but inside we have wider variations than humans, so even if you knew where to start in repairing one of us you would be pretty much going in blind every time. Plus there is no way to get 'replacement parts' so to speak."

"Could you cannibalize other dead Ghosts for parts?" Skaia wondered.

Prospit shot her a look. "Theoretically, but I can't imagine anybody who would do that would find many friends in the Tower.”

Skaia frowned, "We might need to get over such squeamishness after all that has happened lately."

Prospit rolled his eye at her. "Why don't you bring it up with Ikora then?"

"I mean, it's not like we are making any more Ghosts!" Skaia defended. "We need a way to minimize our losses as much as possible."

"I don't see why are you trying to persuade me on this," Prospit responded dryly. "I'm not the one disagreeing with you."

Skaia huffed out a breath and crossed her arms glaring at the colors shifting outside of her jumpship. "They wouldn't get it. They're still stuck in the Speaker's worship of the Traveler."

"Well it is a god."

"Doesn't mean we have to worship her!" Skaia snapped. "The entirety of Consensus are blinded by their fear of anything even seeming like Dark that they will shut down completely reasonable ideas out of moral panic!"

Prospit floated over to his Guardian and pressed himself against her temple. "It is as Ikora told you," he said in a soothingly. "These things take time. Let's just focus on what is right in front of us now."

Skaia sighed, pressing her palm against Prospit's shell in turn. "I know, I know." she murmured. "Let's just go and find these cultists dudes."

And find them they did. Except by that time, it was too late.

"Damn it." Skaia hissed through her teeth looking over the scattered bodies inside the room.

Prospit materialized by her side and ran a scan over one of the bodies. "Fallen." he proclaimed.

"What else?" Skaia said stepping over the bodies into the room. She glanced over them and couldn’t help but murmur: "This is what you get for following phoenix into the fire." She shook her head and focused on the centerpiece of the room.

"You think this is what Vance was talking about?" she asked looking over the pedestal with divot molded for the shell Sagira was wearing.

"Most likely." answered Prospit already scanning the machine from all sides. "This looks like modified Vex tech, but I don't see how it's supposed to be used... Give me a moment."

Skaia ran her fingers over the divot in the pedestal. "Guess they were really banking on Sagira not changing shells huh?" she said.

"Her shell is also made of Vex type material," noted Prospit. "Not really Vex tech, but similar enough, that I would guess it was either build with this machine in mind or vice versa." He gave another circuit of the machine before dropping his scan with frustrated huff. "I can't get anything from it while it's inert."

He turned back towards Skaia and gave her a playful look. "You think I should just yeet Sagira onto it and see what happens?"

Skaia returned his look with a grin on her own, trusting Prospit to read her emotion through their bond even without being able to see her face. "I think you already know the answer to _that_ question."

"Very well then. Yeet!" Prospit gently floated Sagira shell down into the pedestal before running another scan. "Oh yes it's definitely resonating with Sagira, let me try... this."

Skaia jumped slightly as Sagira shell emitted a pulse of light and started floating above the pedestal.

Prospit hurriedly threw out another scan, before suddenly drawing his shell to his core in Ghost equivalent of going pale in the face. "Oh shit. I may have-"

* * *

"-made a mistake." Sagira said.

What? Why did she say that? What mistake? Where was she?

Before she could even start getting her bearings thought there was suddenly a hand wrapped tightly around her shell and she was pulled face to face with a Guardian who going by tone with which she growled "What did you do to my Ghost?" was not sporting a friendly expression behind her faceplate.

"Whoa sister! Give me a moment to get my bearings!" Sagira called out trying vainly to pull her shell tighter to her body.

"You have three seconds," the Guardian growled, not loosening her grip even slightly.

Three seconds might have as well be an eternity to a machine with processing power of a Ghost. Sagira quickly took stock of the situation.

Behind her: a familiar piece of Vex tech with divot in the shape of her shell currently empty but humming like it was just activated.

In front of her: A warlock in quality looking purple robes looking none too pleased even through her helmet.

On her: a foreign shell she had no memory of ever inhabiting.

Sagira didn't have to be a genius to put the pieces together. (She was of course but that was unrelated to current situation.)

"Did you really just put me in a machine with no idea what it does?" she blurted out.

The Warlock lowered her head confrontationally. "My Ghost did. Speaking of..."

"Yes, don't worry its fine!" Sagira called out at the same time a familiar voice came over the coms.

"Guardian, please."

"Ikora!" Sagira exclaimed. "Oh you have no idea how glad I am to hear your voice! We need to find Osiris! He's in over his head as usual, so we've gotta move fast!"

"You've heard her Guardian," Ikora said. "Time is of the essence."

For a brief moment it looked like the Warlock would argue with her Vanguard, but the she visibly took a second to calm down and finally released Sagira. "Okay..." she nodded towards Sagira. "Where to?"

"Mercury," Sagira said transmatting herself into the Warlock's armor. "And seriously don't worry about your Ghost. We're just sharing right now."

"You better not be stuck that way," the warlock grumbled already running out of the hideout.

"Don't worry," Sagira reassured her, "Once we find Osiris we'll get me back in my shell in no time."

"Alright then," Warlock said stopping once they were under sky and after a brief scan of the environment she extended her arm palm up to let Sagira materialize. "I do hope you can get me to my ship."

Sagira rolled her eye and instead of bothering to answer she did just that.

The Warlock nodded sharply before grabbing Sagira once again and dragging her to the cockpit with her, ignoring Sagira's indignant "Hey!"

Once in cockpit she released Sagira and pointed towards the helm computer. "Set a course wherever it is we need to go. Don't touch anything else."

Sagira established a link with the computer as the Warlock started grabbing things around the cockpit and piling them in her arms before throwing them deeper into her ship. She resolutely closed the door before settling in the pilot seat, the cockpit now completely empty of all the various trinkets that were scattered across it just a few moments ago.

"What was that all about?" Sagira asked as the ship peeled off from earth's orbit and slipped into FTL.

Skaia shot her a look doing her best to keep agitations out of her face.

"Don't like strangers looking at my things," she murmured hoping to god that she'd be able to come across as just antisocial weirdo and not a person who just removed at least half a dozen dark artifacts from the room right underneath the metaphorical nose of Ghost of one of the most powerful Warlocks in existence.

"Right..." Sagira drawled, in a thoroughly unimpressed tone, but she obviously wasn't going to push it. Not stuck in a stranger's shell and without her Guardian there to defend her should Skaia decide to protect her secrets in a more drastic way.

Skaia tapped on a arm rest of her seat nervously. She wouldn't kill Sagira of course, that wasn't an option, but she did wish there was a way to know how much she has noticed before Skaia cleared out the cockpit.

The very action of cleaning it out was suspicious in an on itself but letting Sagira observe things scattered across it for any longer would be even worse.

Of course she couldn't remove probably the most implicating artifact from Sagira's sight because the Ghost was currently wearing it.

"So I didn't catch your name." Sagira broke the silence after a while.

"I didn't throw it." Skaia murmured, and quickly weighted pros and cons of presenting grumpy facade to sell her "antisocial weirdo" before deciding it would not hold up to scrutiny and letting herself huff out a laugh before throwing a grin at Sagira and saying, "It's Skaia."

"Skaia..." Sagira echoed. "Hmm that sounds familiar. Have we met before?"

Skaia merely gave her a slow blink, well aware that Ghosts memory was much better than humans and questions like those were a simple stalling tactics as they consulted their deeper memory banks.

True to form a couple seconds later Sagira perked up. "Right! Io! That was you wasn't it?"

Skaia nodded.

"Man you're pretty old."

"You didn't think they would give this kind of mission to a three year old, right?" Skaia asked her grinning to herself.

"Of course not!" Sagira scoffed, not getting Skaia's joke. "Still its nice to know that there are others who managed to survive this long besides Osiris. You know most of people who live this long manage to make a name for themselves at some point."

"Keeping low is how I was able to survive for this long." Skaia shot back.

"Fair enough," Sagira acquiesced. "Sorry about Osiris being kind of a jerk to you back then, by the way," she added.

It's fine." Skaia leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes forestalling any further conversation.

* * *

Being in a foreign shell was weird. Firstly it was too quiet, her neural symbiosis with Osiris mute either with distance or with her being in someone else's shell, it didn't matter. For the first time in a very long time she was alone in her head. There was the connection towards Skaia buried somewhere in this shell, but she would have to tread beyond the space the Vex machine made of her in the other Ghost’s head and onto his consciousness, and Sagira wasn't rude enough to root through someone's brain without their permission.

Not to mention based on how Skaia reacted to having Sagira in her ship she would probably shoot her if she tried to establish a link with her mind.

There were of course all the petty niggles that came with being in a new shell that Sagira didn't have to deal with since she and Osiris forged her old one. Different size, aerodynamics all the fun stuff.

This one also itched. Sagira didn't know shells could do that.

All in all when they finally emerged from FTL in Mercury's orbit it was a welcome distraction.

* * *

Skaia looked out at the golden fields of Mercury's past spotted with patches of pink flowers against the backdrop of gentle purple-white sky. She has seen this place before. Not with her own eyes, but close enough. She had seen how this place came about, from hostile desert to the beauty that now stretched before her. And then the Vex...

Skaia’s hands tightened on her gun as she watched the first Vex structures descend onto Mercury. She has never spared much hate towards the Vex before. It seemed unproductive, like hating a hurricane or the tides. The Vex were simply too indifferent towards the suffering they caused for her to work up any real emotion towards them.

But now as Skaia watched dragonflies fluttering in the air around her, unaware of the calamity that will, that has already descended upon them, she felt something in her chest go cold.

"They took so much from us," she said.

"There is no time to lose guardian. There is still more to see." The reflection of Osiris that has brought her here urged her.

Skaia gave him a nod and looked over the Mercury's past one last time, sparing a brief moment to wish she had time to see if the air here was as sweet as it was in full immersion recordings.... before she stepped through the portal.

* * *

"Did you spend a lot of time of Mercury? You know, before Vex turned it into a desert?" Sagira asked.

Skaia has been acting weird since the reflection showed them Mercury's past. Frankly she had been acting weird from the start, but hey, Sagira was wearing a shell of her Ghost, and Risen were quirky at the best of times, so Sagira was willing to overlook it.

But then the vision of Mercury's past...

Sagira could not begin to guess what ran thought Skaia's head at that moment, but she would have to be blind not to notice the increased fervor with which Skaia tore into three enemies afterwards. A fervor that spoke of precisely controlled rage.

"You know Saint-14 has tried to establish a colony here. Were you helping with that?" she prodded further as Skaia didn't answer her first question.

Skaia remained silent.

Sagira huffed out a frustrated sigh. She had to admit at least to herself that Skaia was starting to rub her the wrong way. Why couldn't she answer some simple questions?

As the Reflection showed them the future they were trying to prevent and then sacrificed itself to let them escape Panoptes she had to give Skaia one thing. Anybody who's first response to giant vex mind showing up was to throw a Nova bomb in its face, had to have some serious balls.

"This is bad. Really really bad," she said as Skaia sprinted down corridor of Infinite forest back into the real world. "We need to work together all of us. You, me Osiris, Ikora. _And-"_

She stressed the last word and Skaia stopped just before the exit of the Forest and tilted her head to the side showing she was listening. "We need to be able to _trust_ each other," Sagira finished.

Skaia considered her words for a moment. "But I do trust you," she said eventually sounding somewhat confused.

"I'm talking about me trusting you," Sagira said. When Skaia gave no response she continued: "You've been acting mighty shifty since the beginning."

"I..." Skaia gave a half confused half unbelieving sound, "Shifty? When?!"

"When we first arrived at your ship for example." Sagira said "When you were super fast about getting rid of all the things from your cockpit before I could get a look on them. And now in the Forest too, you've been acting different since the Reflection showed us Mercury's past."

"I've been acting..." Skaia rubbed her palm over her helmet, "Ok, listen, I'm not sure what do you mean about me acting differently in the Forest, the only thing I've done since we came here was shoot through hordes of Vex simulacrum, I was not aware there was a way to do that 'shiftily'," she said somewhat peevishly. 

"And about our fist meeting-" she sighed. "Listen I'm sorry about threatening you, but I'm just... really testy about my Ghost alright? He means a lot to me and I've... I've almost lost him before and... I don't wanna go through that again,” she looked to the side fingers flexing on her gun and Sagira felt a pang of sympathy. She knew far too well how important Guardian and a Ghost could be to each other.

“And the ship thing like...” Skaia sighed, “I know it's sus but I really am just a private person alright? Those things are not something I planned on showing anybody but Prospit and with you wearing his shell I... I just didn't want you to see them alright?"

Sagira spun her shell uncertainly. Was she really just overreacting? "But you see where I'm coming from right?" she asked.

“Frankly? No.” Skaia answered. “I understand that I haven’t been... the easiest person to deal with, but I don’t see how that translates to not being able to trust me to fight an extinction level threat.”

She extended her hand and after a moment of hesitation Sagira materialized above it.

"Know this." Skaia said raising Sagira to her eye level, "I would never keep a secret that would risk a mission like this, no matter how precious it was to me. This I swear to you."

Sagira looked into the blank helmet for a moment before eventually nodding.

They stepped out of the Infinite forest together.

Explaining the situation to Ikora didn't take long at all and after a brief discussion on how to proceed they had their next destination: Io.

"That's where me and Osiris found you." Sagira noted as they slipped into FTL.

"Yep."

"What were you doing out there anyway?" Sagira couldn't help but asking.

Skaia sighed throwing Sagira an annoyed look wondering if saying: 'I thought you trusted me now.' would improve the situation.

"Idle curiosity, nothing more I assure you," she said instead spreading her arms disarmingly.

"You don't tour solar system in ship that ends up falling apart during reentry for 'Idle curiosity'." Sangria retorted.

Skaia rolled her eyes. "Well it's not like we knew it was going to fall apart."

Sagira kept giving her an unimpressed look and eventually Skaia gave an annoyed huff and said: "Fine. I wanted to avoid all the Warlord drama that was going down on Earth, so I took the first ship that could be considered space worthy and left. After that it truly was not having anything better to do than to travel around the system exploring all the wonders our absent parent has left us with."

Sagira gave her a long look, not being able to find anything wrong with the explanation but still apparently unwilling to take Skaia at her word.

Skaia gave another sigh not bothering to hider her aggravation from Sagira. If she was going to treat her with same suspicion when telling the truth as when she was lying then what was the point of talking at all?

The ride to Io was even tenser than their ride to Mercury.

* * *

Sagira had to admit she may have gotten a little cocky after her success with the conflux at Pyramidion's entrance. This was especially infuriating because she was so sure she had configured that portal correctly to drop them right where they need to go. Nevertheless, now they were in a completely unfamiliar part of the Pyramidion and Sagira knew that the last place you wanted to be lost in it would be Vex structure. (Hive tunnels being close second.)

Skaia didn't seemed nearly as concerned as Sagira felt, which was probably for the best. Or maybe she was just really good at hiding it. She was studying the wall to her right really intensely, but before Sagira could ask her what she was doing she sighed and said: "Well it seems its time to put my money where my mouth is," and started clambering up the wall.

"What are you doing?" Sagira asked.

"With me, you get the shortcut." Skaia echoed what Sagira said to her at the Pyramidion's entrance as they reached the top of the wall, where Sagira was surprised to discover a small hole between it and the ceiling. It looked for all things like an accident but Sagira knew Vex didn't do accidents.

As Skaia wiggled into the opening and started crawling through duct beyond Sangria asked: "How did you know this was here?"

"Well I did spend some quality time on this planet if you remember." Skaia said. "And that included a lot of time to learn all kinds of Pyramidion's tricks."

"You told us you didn't learn anything in here," Sagira said accusing.

"We did no such thing." Skaia threw an annoyed look into middle distance in lieu of going through trouble of having Sagira materialize. "Osiris asked me if I found anything worthwhile on the planet, I looked embarrassed and demurred. You two drew your own conclusions."

The irritating thing about that was that she was right. Sagira didn't have a luxury of imperfect memories to let her pretend otherwise. "So is this supposed to be some lesson about mine and Osiris’ arrogance?" she asked peevishly.

“If you wanna take it that way.” Skaia shrugged twisting her body around a corner in an impressive display of flexibility revealing a small Vex gate at the end of the duct.

Sagira was silent for a couple of seconds before she spoke again, “I don’t understand. Why would you keep this a secret from us?”

“I’m a Voidwalker it’s what I do.”

“That’s it?” Sagira exclaimed incredulously. “You use void, so not going to share in what you learn?”

“I do share!” Skaia snapped, as she reached the Vex gate. She extended her hand to touch it and there was a brief moment of disorientation before they were suddenly hanging above a bottomless pit, Skaia’s hand wrapped around a piece of protruding geometry only thing preventing them from plummeting to their doom.

“Just not everything. And it’s not as if Osiris’ inability to keep his opinions to himself was any less typical of Dawnblade that secrets keeping is for Voidwalker, so if you want to criticize me for being stereotypical you have no leg to stand on." Skaia continued completely unbothered by their precarious position.

“What you’re saying Osiris should be less honest?” Sagira retorted unwilling to let the conversation go but grudgingly impressed by the fact that Skaia managed to grab onto something while she was teleporting.

“I’m saying,” Skaia swung her body forward and let go and then to Sagira’s surprise instead of trying to float upwards she flicked her legs downwards and managed to reach the ledge of the platform she had been hanging off of, using what was unmistakably a Hunter jump. “That sometimes discretion is a better part of the valor.”

There was a welcoming party of the Vex up on the platform. Skaia shot one of them, threw a grenade that ripped apart other 3 and finished emptying her clip into the last two.

"You know this is not making you look any less suspicious." Sagira told Skaia as she scanned the area for any more threats.

"Is it not?" Skaia mused as she shot a Vex cube prompting a conflux to materialize. "Has this not proven that I am wiling to expose my secrets in order get us to our goal quicker?"

"You know ‘trustworthy’ usually means someone who isn't keeping secrets in the first place." Sagira snipped back.

Skaia gave a derisive scoff, "Everybody keeps secrets Sagira, don't act like you don't know this."

"Listen," she interrupted as Sagira primed her retort, "we can either spend the next hour here arguing morality and trustworthiness, or you accept that it is in my best interest not to let a huge Vex mind extinguish the sun and wipe out humanity, and consider me trustworthy until we can get Osiris back and put Panoptes int he dirt and then we can go our separate ways."

She extended her arm palm up and as Sagira materialized she raised it to her eye level. "Or we can keep antagonizing each other and both end up dead in a ditch somewhere because we couldn't trust each other in the crucial moment, with Osiris and the rest of humanity soon to follow. So which it'll be?"

Sagira bit back a automatic response and instead took a deep breath. Skaia was right, they both need to focus on the bigger threat.

Still that didn't mean it didn't sting.

"And you?" she challenged.

"Skaia looked at her evenly, "I trust you to do your job." she answered. "Do you trust me to do mine?"

Sagira looked at her for a long moment. "I do." she said and was surprised to find out she meant it.

Skaia inclined her head and gestured at the conflux.

Sagira nodded back and flew over to the conflux to dig through the data contained within, opening comm channel to Ikora in the meantime.

However digging though the data index there was nothing like what she was searching for. "The map's not here. I don't understand," she said.

"Keep looking." Ikora and Skaia answered in almost perfect synch.

Sagira threw an amused look at Skaia. "Let me guess, you studied under Ikora?"

Skaia gave an exaggerated eye roll, "I learned a thing or two. Now tell me that you've got something."

Sagira swept the index once again, broadening her search parameters. "Well as it happens I actually do." She threw out a hologram of what she found, "Coordinates for a node in an infinite forest. That's where our map is."

Skaia sighed. "Why does it feel like we're just swinging between mercury and other Vex inhabited planets without making any progress?"

"But we are making progress," Sagira said encouragingly. "Once we find the map we can go straight to Panoptes."

"And do what exactly?" Skaia asked tiredly. "Get deleted from existence? I don't need to remind you how our last meeting went."

"Last time he got the drop on us. This time it will be the other way around. And with any luck we can get message to Osiris and he'll meet us there. Together Panoptes won't stand a chance."

Skaia gave a another long suffering sigh and clapped her hands together. "Alright, back to Mercury it is. Hmm..."

She tilted her head to the side, and gestured for Sagira to cut coms before asking: "Aren't all Vex structures connected in some way?"

Sagira gave her a raised eyebrow. "Even Osiris never managed to travel between various Vex structures on purpose. You think you can get from Pyramidion to Infinite forest faster that it would take us to fly to Mercury?"

For anybody else she would mean that question rhetorically, but considering the knack Skaia had with traversing Pyramidion already she found herself asking that question seriously.

Skaia too seemed to consider it for a second before she shook her head and Sagira was fairly surprised to find herself legitimately disappointed.

"Let's go to Mercury then." she said. "and I swear to god I'm not leaving until Panoptes is dead this time."

* * *

As it turned out the map to Panoptes was located in a middle of Cabal combat simulation. Fun.

"You know, Cabal are my fucking second least favorite enemies." Skaia complained. as she tore thought a group of them with Nova bomb.

"Oh really? Who's your least favorite?" Sagira asked.

"Vex." Skaia bit out.

"Oh," Sagira chuckled, "so you're not a fan of this place."

Skaia actually _hissed_ underneath her helmet.

"You know, I lied." She said after a bit. "I actually like fighting cabal, precisely because they are my least favorite, morality wise."

Sagira raised her eyebrow internally. "So you don't mind Vex morality?"

"Vex at least have the decency to be fucking ineffable in their blue and orange morality. Cabal are just your run of the mill imperialists." Skaia said. "Also they're slavers to boot so like... fuck them."

"And!" she added as she threw another Nova, finishing off the Cabal commander they were pursuing. "They took our light. So double fuck them. How did you and Osiris handle that by the way?"

"We pretty much just rewound time to where the light was back with us." Sagira admitted.

"Wow." Skaia deadpanned unimpressed.

"I know." Sagira winced. "Osiris wanted to go and help, but I argued with him that he'd just get himself killed. He's not that great of a shot," she admitted. "Most of his power comes from his light, and mastery over the Infinite Forest. Facing down Ghaul he would have neither."

Skaia sighed and shook her head. "Well I can hardly judge you." After a second consideration she elaborated: "I also wasn't part of the assault on the city."

She looked down at her hand and clenched it into fist. "I suppose we had both proven ourselves cowards that day."

"Or people who knew where their strengths and their weaknesses are." Sagira suggested.

Skaia smiled wryly beneath her helmet. "Or that."

"C'mon." Sagira said. "Let's get that map."

As it turned out finding the map was only half the trick.

"I can't find Panoptes." Sagira admited. "The map's too big, and it keeps changing."

"Oh my god." Skaia groaned pressing her palms to her helmet and then apparently feeling like that wasn't getting her feelings across properly she took of her helmet so she could press the base of her palms to her eyes. "Are you serious?"

"Hey I'm not very pleased with this situation either." Sagira snapped back.

"Well how do Vex search it then?" Skaia asked. "Why can't you emulate it?"

"Your run of the mill Vex don't have reason to search the map for anything." Sagira explained. "And Minds have much more processing power than I do. There might be some of them on Nessus that we could use-"

"Hold up." Skaia interrupted her. "Surely there are Vex minds in the Infinite Forest itself. Why the fuck would we hoof it all the way over to Nessus?"

"All the Vex in the infinite forest are a simulations. You can't strip simulations for parts. And there is nothing outside of the Forest that would necessitate Minds being on Mercury. Nessus is our best shot."

"No." Skaia shook her head baring her teeth. "I told you I would not leave Mercury this time until we defeat Panoptes. We've been facing nothing but roadblocks this whole time. For all we know once we get the Vex core we're gonna need to go all the way over to... I don't fucking know, Venus or something, to get it working, and then to Mars and so on and so on, and by the time we actually get to Panoptes the apocalypse is long over. We need to stop loosing time."

"Well what do _you_ suggest we do then?" Sagira snapped.

"I'm working on that!" Skaia snapped back, starting to pace. After a couple of circuits she stopped and came over to the interface leaning over it like she could force it to give up the answers they needed by sheer force of will.

Sagira rolled her eye. What Skaia was hoping to accomplish, without being able to even interface with the map was beyond her.

"Just more processing power. That's all you need?" Skaia asked.

"Yes."

The silence between them stretched out for a long moment before Skaia asked: "Sagira. If I asked you to, could you keep a secret? Even from Osiris."

Sagira narrowed her eye, "If it anything that could threaten humanity..."

"It's not."

"Then..." Sagira considered it for a long second. She has never kept a secret from Osiris. Could she start now? "Is this going to help us save him?"

"If it works."

"...Then yes."

There was a long moment of Skaia staring into middle distance biting her lip, an inner conflict writ clear across her face. At last she took a deep breath and nodding to herself she turned back to Sagira, with determination in her eyes.

"Do you have access to files Prospit keeps in his databanks?" she asked.

"Technically yes," Sagira answered wondering where this was going. "But I wasn't planning on looking at them."

"Ok, I'm going to need you to pull up one of the files." Skaia said and then recited a file path that brought Sagira to-

"This is a picture," Sagira said.

More specifically it was a vector graphic, all geometric shapes, with various, what Sagira could only describe as runes, inlaid within.

"Yes, project it so I can make some changes." Skaia requested.

Sagira did so, slightly baffled, but willing to see where this thing would lead.

Skaia looked over the projected image with a critical eye for a moment before removing some of the runes and replacing them with different ones, as well as removing and adding some shapes. The modifications would look random at first glance, but as Sagira kept watching, she could almost see the intent behind them.

"Ok," Skaia said at last. "If you could just carve this," she gestured at the image, "anywhere on the ground? It doesn't have to be very deep, just enough not to get disrupted by any other imperfections in the ground."

"What exactly are you doing?" Sagira couldn't help but ask as she followed Skaia's instructions.

Skaia dragged her palm over her face. "Please don't ask." she grimaced. "This is already hard enough for me."

That didn't help Sagira's burning curiosity any, but she refrained for asking any more questions.

Eventually the sigil was done and as Sagira floated backwards from her handiwork Skaia removed one of her gloves and fished out a knife from... somewhere on her person.

She turned towards Sagira and took a deep breath before asking: "Did you ever siphon energy from an outside source?"

"I... yes? I used myself as a conduit a couple times to transfer energy between incompatible systems."

"Ok so this is going to be the same except you are going to use the energy."

"What are talking about? What energy?"

"Just... " Skaia waved her over. "Come here. And don't ask. Please."

Slowly Sagira floated to where Skaia gestured above the middle of the sigil, and once she was in position Skaia took the knife in her hand and cut open her wrist lengthwise.

Sagira's shell flared in alarm as she did that and then once more as the blood that poured from the wound was soaked up by the sigil which started emitting whips of energy.

“What the hell?”

Skaia grinned at her humorlessly. “This energy. Use it!”

Sagira shot her shock aside and mentally reached out to the whips that seemed to react to her intentions and started gravitating towards her soaking into her shell. Sagira cycled the energy though her systems and...

"Whoa," she breathed. "That’s one hell of a rush!"

"Just get the Panoptes." Skaia gritted out.

"On it." Sagira said and reached once more into the map.

And this time... she could see. Everything.

“Oh yeah, I’ve got him. Overlaying onto the map. There!” If Sagira had a face she would be grinning. “Panoptes always ends up in the same coordinates. That’s how we kill him.”

Somewhere outside of the network she could perceive a reflection teleporting in and gazing over the map she was projecting.

“I’ve detected a change,” it said. “A new future. I will inform Osiris.”

With that it blinked away.

Sagira was about to disconnect from the Vex network when it suddenly... shifted.

“Wait...” Sagira paused, “There’s something... a defensive subroutine?”

A shadow fell over them as Panoptes materialized from the sky.

“No! No!” Sagira yelled. They were so close!

The energy coursing through her shell winked out as Skaia tore herself away from the sigil an arc of blood following her hand as she drew it back and threw a Nova bomb at Panoptes.

This time Panoptes flinched slightly as the bomb impacted but it didn’t draw its attention from Sagira.

It slammed its hands together and Sagira screamed as she felt Panoptes’ will clamp onto her.

“It’s got me!!!” she screamed as she was pulled inexorably towards Panoptes.

“NO!” Skaia screamed as she lunged forward crossing the distance with a Blink, her blood stained fingers clamping onto her Ghost’s shell.

But it wasn't the shell that interested Panoptes.

Last thing that Sagira perceived was Skaia’s voice screaming: “Prospit!”

* * *

Prospit came to and he immediately knew something was wrong. Being suddenly transported to a different planet that the one you remember being on, with no memory on how you got there would do that to you.

Before he could start to get his bearings he was distracted by Skaia's strangled shout. "Prospit!"

Prospit turned and his eyes widened at Skaia's state.

Her right hand was gushing blood from a cut along her wrist, barely stymied by her other hand clamped onto the wound and she was stumbling forward looking around wildly, looking ready to pass out.

"Skaia!" Prospit exclaimed.

Skaia whirled around to face him and the moment her eyes met his all tension melted from her frame.

"Oh thank god." she murmured before her knees buckled underneath her and she slammed into the ground like a puppet with its strings cut.

Prospit flew over to her grasping at thread between himself and his Guardian. It was still there unaffected by whatever happened to him and he sighed in relief, before quickly scanning the area around for any threats as Skaia finished bleeding out. Seeing nothing he turned back to his Guardian, and opened up his shell letting the light course through him.

Skaia came to with a gasp and she immediately focused on her Ghost.

"Prospit!" she said curving her hand around his shell and hugging him to her chest. "You have no idea how glad i am to see you.

She released him and dragged a hand over her helmet giving a humorless chuckle. "God that would have been such a stupid death..." she murmured to herself.

"Alright, can you tell me what the hell happened here?" Prospit asked.

Skaia looked up at him. "How much do you remember?"

"I..." Prospit paused for a moment to query his memory banks, "Wait..." There were memories there, but they were not his.

"Huh," he said as he quickly went through them all. "You've been busy." He turned back to Skaia and gave her an amused look. "So it was a world ending threat after all. Color me shocked."

"Hah." Skaia said getting up and brushing dust off her robes. "We've got to get back there," she said turning towards the entrance to the Infinite forest fully serious now.

However when she approached, rather than opening before her like it did with Sagira, the gateway pushed her back, like the first time she tried to enter.

"Damn it!" Skaia snapped.

"Do you know what Sagira did to open this thing?" she asked Prospit.

Prospit reviewed Sagira's memories. "No," he admitted with a wince. "Whatever she did it did not stay in the memory banks."

"Damn it." Skaia growled.

"What would you even do if we were able to access it?" Prospit asked "Get yourself killed by Panoptes?"

Skaia glared at her Ghost. "I would kill Panoptes," she corrected

"And how are you planing on doing that?"

"I'd shoot him." Skaia deadpanned running her hand over the barrier separating her from the Forest hand bathed in void light.

"You already tired that." Prospit pointed out testily. "Why would it suddenly be vulnerable to your bullets?"

"Narrative convenience."

Prospit looked at Skaia incredulously. "That's not a thing! We've been over this!"

"And we've been over the fact that it’s the only way to explain the biggest threats in the system getting taken down by 4 year old."

Prospit shook his head, "Wouldn't that be even more of a reason to call Dos to help?" he implored.

Skaia considered it for a moment.

"Send message to Ikora," she said eventually. "Tell her that if we're not back in-" she made a watch checking gesture Prospit automatically projecting time to her HUD as she did so, "-ten minutes that she needs to send Dos in. Give her the coordinates to Panoptes too."

"Skaia no!" Prospit shouted. "This is insanity you're smarter that this. Unless..."

He trailed off and Skaia turned to him, the blank faceplate of her helmet unreadable but through their connection there was a feeling like... hope.

"Unless you have a plan." Prospit finished.

Skaia gave a slow nod. "Do you trust me?" she asked.

"Of course," Prospit said without hesitation.

Skaia ran her fingers over his shell. "Let's go then."

Prospit materialized back into her armor and Skaia coated her arm in void flames and rammed it straight through the barrier surrounding gateway.

They both disappeared into the forest.

* * *

"Phew." Skaia sighed in relief as they watched Osiris digging into Panoptes’ corpse in search of his Ghost. "Didn't even need to use my plan after all."

"Do I want to know?" Prospit asked.

"Probably not. It was _very_ stupid."

Prospit gave a long suffering sigh. "Tell me anyway."

“You noticed how Panoptes flinched for the second time I threw Nova bomb at it?

Prospit replayed the footage. "Yes?"

"The only thing different between that time and the first was the fact that I was in a middle of a blood sacrifice. So..."

Prospit stayed silent for a moment as he considered that.

"You remember how I told you you should experiment with mixing you magic and Light?" he asked eventually.

"Yes." Skaia answered.

"And remember what you told me?"

Skaia sighed. "'There's no way that'll ever be useful, Light is so much more powerful for this to ever make a difference.'" She recited.

Prospit glanced at her somewhat surprised. "I didn't expect you to actually remember."

"Every time something I say turns out to be cringe the memory of it gets seared into my brain for eternity." Skaia deadpanned.

Prospit snorted and they both watched in silence as Osiris ascended from the abyss Sagira circling around his head excitedly.

* * *

Ikora was waiting at the gateway to the Forest, Dos by her side.

Skaia gave them a wave and then made a dramatic 'ta-dah' motion as Osiris emerged from the Forest behind her. Sans his helmet he looked about twenty percent less cooler, but he also looked... ordinary. Less like a mythical exiled vanguard and more like simply a Guardian. Skaia suspected that might rather be the point.

"The Vex mind is destroyed and the path to their dark future is gone with it," Osiris announced as they came down the steps, Skaia coming to stand next to Dos.

"And I case you were wondering our Guardians were _amazing_." Sagira bragged.

"Yes she rather was, wasn't she," Prospit said impishly.

"Hey!" Sagira exclaimed. "Don't you try to pretend she did it all on her own! She would have never defeated Panoptes without Osiris' help."

"Well we can never know that," Prospit said in a tone of voice that implied he very much _did_ know. "But you simply must admit my Guardian did pretty much all the heavy lifting."

Sagira scoffed. "I think you're just bitter because you spent the whole time asleep."

"You possessed me!" Prospit bristled.

"Yeah and who's fault is that? Didn't you learn not to play with Vex tech?"

"I know how to work Vex tech perfectly fine when it's actual Vex tech and not frankenstein monstrosity with no internal labels! Who even built that thing??"

Ikora chucked and turned away from the bickering Ghosts. "Osiris," she said. "It's been... a very long time."

"Too long my... I..." Osiris chuckled "I was going to say 'student' - but, that word is too small for you now." His gaze slid over to Dos. "And who is this?"

"My backup," Skaia answered, clapping Dos on the shoulder.

"A Guardian who makes habit of the impossible," Ikora elaborated smiling. "but it seems she is not the only one." She nodded towards Skaia who gave her a lazy salute.

She turned back to Osiris. "I am... glad to see you alive," she said at last.

"Yes... So am I." Osiris said

He and Ikora looked at each other for a while, atmosphere turning awkward before Skaia gave a dramatic sight.

"You know you can hug each other right?" she called.

"You know in fact, we can even give you privacy if you need to." she said grabbing Dos by the shoulder and turning both of them around.

There was a moment of silence, then a chuck from Ikora echoed by Osiris. Then a fabric rustle from Osiris, sound of Ikora's footsteps and more fabric rustles.

Skaia gave a subtle fist bump.

"The city has changed a lot in the past few years." Ikora said. "You could come back with me."

"No, my place is here now." Osiris declined. "Besides, many equations lead to the same outcome. The Vex might try again, but this time we will be ready for them."

He chuckled. "You can turn around now." he called.

Skaia turned around with a flourish spreading her arms disarmingly. Ikora and Osiris were pulled away from each other but they were still holding each other's wrists.

"I have predicted many things but I never saw you." Osiris said to Skaia.

"Isn't that what Guardians are about?" Skaia smiled. "Making our own fate?"

"Yes. Yes we are." Osiris nodded. "I have allowed myself to forget. Thank you for reminding me."

He have Ikora's arms one last squeeze before turning around and ascending the steps to the gateway. "The pathway to the Forest will be open to you if you ever need to find me-" he reached the top of the steps and turned back to look at Ikora, "-or if you want to talk."

"I'd like that." Ikora answered.

"That applies to you too." Sagira piped up looking over at Skaia. "You ever want to stop by and chat don't hesitate. I suspect I left a map of the Forest somewhere in your brain," she added to Prospit teasingly.

Osiris chucked. "Come, little light." He motioned to Sagira. "We have infinite realities to explore - and all the time in the world."

And then, with last glance backwards, they were gone.

Skaia sidled up to Ikora and leaned towards her, faux-casually. "'You could come back with me?’ My my how you changed you tune! What happened to 'these things take time'?"

"I've changed my mind." Ikora responded airily. "Besides, there would be no better time, to push that decision than when Osiris just finished saving the universe from the Vex. But-" she sighed, "as much as it pains me to say it this might be for the best. Osiris coming back would be.. divisive."

Skaia snorted and Ikora turned towards Dos. "Thank you for coming here on such a short notice Guardian. You might not have been needed today, but it is always better to be safe than sorry as you know."

Dos gave a nod in acknowledgement and Ikora turned back towards Skaia all business now. "I shall requisition a reward for your deed here from the Vanguard vaults. You can come pick it up tomorrow."

"It better be an Exotic." Skaia grumbled playfully. "I saved the world today, you know."

Ikora's smile gained a teasing edge. "Rest assured the reward will be... appropriate," she said before turning around and transmating up to her ship.

"What does that mean?! Hey!" Skaia shouted up at the particles disappearing into the air.

"Just for that she's going to give you a blue." Prospit smirked.

Skaia gave a bark of laughter. "She's going to give me a white. Anyway!" she gave a stretch and turned back to Dos. "Do you want to go and grab..."

The only thing behind her was another cloud of rapidly disappearing transmat particles.

"...drinks." Skaia finished, dropping her arms. "Huh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you ever just put out a chapter more than double the length of the previous three?

**Author's Note:**

> Obviously Dos is our player character, I decided to give our ghost name as well, he deserves it. Skaia is more of an OC, and there is a bit more to her than meets the eye. We'll see how long it'll take before her secrets start to be revealed.


End file.
